Automated marketing campaigns spark customer loyalty

EDP España improved customer recovery rate and customer loyalty

The Spanish electricity market has traditionally been a captive market in which electricity companies distributed the territory and subscribers. As a result of this practice, customers were unable to select the energy provider of their choice, and most often remained with the same company for life.

This model significantly conditioned corporate governance, which focused its strategy in the areas of power generation and distribution with the goal of producing electricity at the lowest possible cost and having more efficient networks to deliver the kilowatts needed to customers.

The commercial side of the business received only moderate attention, and management control was limited to consumption and billing receipts. But when the market is liberalized, this situation changes radically.

Multichannel management is important to us, and SAS allows us to adapt to the needs of each customer segment.

Carlos Menéndez
Senior Manager, Database Marketing

Recently, the residential market began to reform, resulting in more opportunities for customers. End users can now choose which provider they want to hire for the supply of electricity and gas, regardless of the geographical area in which they are located.

EDP España, part of the EDP group, is no stranger to this new reality. The company is transforming itself, placing the customer at the center of its business strategy.

As its first priority, EDP España wanted to recover former customers who decided to change companies and opt for another provider. To achieve this goal, EDP España needed to identify those customers who pursued other options, understand the reasoning behind their departures and then take action to regain their business.

The energy provider needed a solution to help segment its customers, communicate with them and provide feedback about their actions all in an automated way. That’s when the company turned to SAS.

Revitalizing customer relationships with better insights, offers

“With the support of SAS, we have not only recovered the supply we had lost to the liberalized market, but thanks to the retention and recovery offerings we have designed, many customers have combined gas and electricity services and opted for new maintenance services,” says Ricardo Santander, Director of Marketing and B2C sales of EDP España.

Although the company incurred costs related to the recovery of customers, this expense has been offset by having more customers using its products and services.

“Our customer recovery rates are above 80 percent,” says Santander.

Automated processes improve customer connections

SAS has helped EDP España automate processes in its customer relationships, which is essential, considering the customer base consists of 2 million people.

SAS Marketing Automation also allows EDP España to achieve multichannel campaign management with its customers, optimizing communications through all available channels. Now communications are conducted via email, telemarketing, the Internet or even face to face.

“Multichannel management is important to us, and SAS allows us to adapt to the needs of each customer segment,” says Carlos Menéndez, Head of Business Intelligence at EDP España. “We are also able to segment customers according to their predicted lifetime value. This helps us focus campaigns on those customers with the greatest potential.”

When a customer leaves the company, the marketing department takes action to try to recover the relationship through customized offers. Automated processes are vital to this process.

Customer loyalty, retention soar

SAS also supports EDP España’s initiative to prevent customer attrition of its most valuable consumers. To maintain and protect this demographic, proactive measures are taken so customers are less responsive to potential competitive offerings. Thanks to these measures of customer loyalty and retention, EDP España has achieved excellent fidelity ratios.

"The loyalty of our customers is well above the industry average,” adds Santander. “In addition, SAS has empowered our business model to support a streamlined and automated process, and it is a key element in our marketing endeavors.”

“What we value most about SAS is the fact that it is an integrated solution that allows us to make decisions in an analytical way and transfer them to the market very quickly,” says Menéndez. “It also supports and integrates with other tools available on the market.”

Challenge

Recover customers who chose to switch companies, understand what led to their departures and design marketing activities to regain their business.

Solution

Benefits

EDP España achieved a customer recovery rate of more than 80%, electricity customer loyalty of 95% and 80% loyalty among gas customers.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.